BioShock 4 - Open World RPG?

[Silver]

PCGamesN reports that BioShock 4 could be an open world RPG.

next Bioshock game is going to have an open world. A new studio, Cloud Chamber, is looking to hire fresh talent, including a senior writer capable of delivering "character-driven stories in an open world setting". It may seem strange, but I never imagined for a moment that Bioshock would go open world. My love for the series has evidently clouded my judgment, as I'm only just beginning to realise that a healthy sprinkling of RPG goodness is precisely what Bioshock's plasmid-charged universe needs.

I've spent hours plundering the watery depths of Rapture's crumbling cityscape, with nothing but Andrew Ryan's misanthropic musings to keep me company. In another timeline, I skyhooked through the clouds of an immense floating city. Bioshock's anarchic dystopias are an absolute joy to behold, helping to deliver some of the most impressive set pieces in gaming. But the trilogy's on-rails approach to storytelling can sometimes hurt the overall experience.

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More information.

 

[NFLed]

In my view the strongest aspect of the BioShock games is the story and writing, and for this to be created by a different developer with the potential for less focus on storytelling (due to being open world) I'm not optimistic.

I won't think of this as a new BioShock game, but I will be open to reading about it to see if I would like it, and I like open world RPGs in general so I'm not opposed to BioShock being open world.

 

[JDR13]

The author is mostly just speculating. It's been rumored the next Bioshock is going to have a more open world, but I haven't seen anything yet that suggests it's going to be an RPG.

I'm not too worried about the new developer. Cloud Chamber is a divsion of 2K Games, and several of the devs worked on the previous games.

 

[Nereida]

I usually don't place much value in the "open world" tag. It's a kind of tradeoff, in which I find myself in the losing end lately. If Bioshock goes open world, I hope it is within reason, and not this random repopping encounters, procedurally generated loot, "sandbox" nonsense that is plaguing the genre for the last few years with only mediocre results.

 

[Irien]

I felt like Arkane's Prey was very much in the vain of a Bioshock successor (also System Shock) and whilst that wasn't entirely open-world, it was a connected/linked, revisitable world, rather than a completely linear experience.

That would seem to be a perfect fit for a Bioshock game, really - open enough to allow you to go back and forth as much as you'd like/need/want, but structured enough to provide a story narrative.